Session: Paternal Self-Efficacy and Father Involvement (Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference - Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth)

Abstract:  Father involvement has been established as a key predictor for child and adolescent education, occupation, mental health, physical health and economic outcomes.  Researchers have attempted to find factors that promote father involvement to increase these outcomes, turning primarily to relationship and demographic factors.  While several relationship factors such as co-parenting alliance and relationships satisfaction have been evaluated and established as impactful, a dearth of literature evaluates that role of paternal self-efficacy or confidence in the parenting realm.  The studies within this symposium evaluate the impact of paternal confidence on father involvement with various populations.  Results indicate that across several different populations including low-income African American, Latino, Caucasian, and Veteran fathers, paternal self-efficacy is an important factor related to father involvement.  Furthermore, it appears that paternal self-efficacy may have greater impact on father involvement than relationship factors such as co-parenting alliance and relationship satisfaction.  Specific populations such as veterans and low income fathers that lack paternal self-efficacy may be at greater risk for lower engagement, resulting in poorer child outcomes.  While most of the recent focus of father intervention has resided in co-parenting alliance, paternal self-efficacy is rarely the focus for increasing father engagement.  Especially for vulnerable populations, it appears that paternal self-efficacy is a key factor for father intervention and future research.